My daughter's schedule was packed. School, homework, piano, soccer, tutoring, playdates. She was busy constantly but couldn't tell me what she'd actually accomplished at the end of any given week. Something was wrong with our daily routines and focus.
Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky's "Make Time" framework helped me understand the problem: we'd confused busyness with meaning. Their approach isn't about productivity hacks or doing more—it's about doing what matters.
The Highlight System
The core of Make Time is simple: each day, choose one "Highlight"—the one thing you want to make time for that will make the day feel satisfying and meaningful. Not the most urgent thing, not the thing others want from you, but the thing that matters to you.
For children, this might be finishing a book they're excited about, practicing a skill they're developing, spending time with a particular friend, or working on a creative project. The highlight isn't additional homework—it's the thing that makes the day worthwhile.
We started asking my daughter each morning: "What's your highlight for today?" At first, she didn't know how to answer. Gradually, she learned to identify what actually mattered to her amid all the scheduled activities.
Making Defaults Work
Knapp and Zeratsky point out that modern technology has "default" settings that don't serve us—infinite social media feeds, autoplay videos, constant notifications. These defaults fill every spare moment with distraction.
For children, changing defaults is crucial. We turned off notifications, removed autoplay, and made screens require intentional activation rather than being passively available. The phone charges in the kitchen, not the bedroom. Apps that fragment attention are moved off the home screen. A parallel challenge emerges around atomic habits for families.
The goal isn't to ban technology—it's to change the defaults so that focused time is the automatic state, and distraction requires effort.
Laser Mode
Once you've chosen your highlight, you need to create the conditions to actually do it. The authors call this "Laser"—strategies for beating distraction and staying focused.
For kids, Laser mode might mean working in a distraction-free space, using timers to create focused blocks, or having a designated "highlight time" when nothing else is scheduled. My daughter now has an hour after school that's protected for her highlight—whatever she chose that morning.
The key is creating barriers to distraction. When the phone is in another room, checking it requires effort. When there's a specific time for focused work, there's permission to ignore everything else.
Energy Management
Make Time emphasizes that focus requires energy. You can't concentrate when you're exhausted, hungry, or haven't moved your body. The authors include physical well-being as essential to meaningful time use. You see this reflected in how screen time before bed affects sleep as well.
For children, this translates to: adequate sleep (non-negotiable), regular physical activity (not just organized sports—actual play and movement), proper nutrition (including during school hours), and breaks between demanding activities.
We restructured my daughter's after-school routine to include a snack and some unstructured outdoor time before homework or highlights. Her focus dramatically improved.
Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics confirms what Knapp and Zeratsky intuit: children between ages six and twelve need at least sixty minutes of unstructured physical activity daily to maintain optimal cognitive function. When that movement happens before focused mental work, concentration improves by up to 20 percent. We accidentally discovered this—my daughter's homework quality jumped noticeably once we moved outdoor time before study time rather than after.
For younger children, around ages four to seven, the highlight concept works best when a parent helps frame the choice. Offer two or three options rather than an open-ended question: "Would you like your highlight to be building with Legos, painting, or reading together?" This scaffolding prevents overwhelm while still building the decision-making muscle. By eight or nine, most children can identify their own highlights without prompts.
Teenagers need a different approach entirely. Their highlights often conflict with parental expectations—gaming with friends, creating social media content, or simply doing nothing. Resist the urge to judge their choices. The skill you are building is self-direction, not compliance. A teenager who genuinely chooses their highlight and protects time for it is practicing exactly the intentionality Knapp and Zeratsky advocate, even if the chosen activity seems frivolous to adults. The same tension runs through no-drama discipline.
The Infinity Pools Problem
Knapp and Zeratsky use the term "Infinity Pools" for apps and content designed to be bottomless—social media, streaming video, news feeds. These are engineered to capture and hold attention indefinitely.
Children are especially vulnerable to Infinity Pools because their self-regulation is still developing. The solution isn't willpower—it's structural. We removed Infinity Pool apps from my daughter's devices entirely and replaced them with finite alternatives: downloaded music instead of streaming, saved videos instead of YouTube, messaging with specific friends instead of social media.
The goal is to make consumption bounded rather than infinite.
Reflection, Quality, and the Highlight Life
The Make Time system includes daily reflection: Did you make time for your highlight? What worked? What got in the way? This creates a feedback loop for continuous improvement.
We adapted this for our family with a simple dinner question: "Did you do your highlight today? How did it go?" Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. Either way, we learn something about what supports meaningful time and what undermines it.
Over weeks, patterns emerge. My daughter noticed that her highlights almost never happen when she has afternoon activities—there's just not enough time or energy left. This led to a conversation about whether all those activities were worth what they cost. Parents grappling with how to stop over-scheduling your child recognize this pattern instantly.
The deeper message of Make Time is that time quality matters more than time quantity. An hour spent fully present on something meaningful is worth more than four hours of fragmented, distracted activity. Helping children understand that "how" matters more than "how much" is a gift. They learn to evaluate not just whether they did things, but whether those things mattered.
A few months into practicing Make Time, something shifted. My daughter started saying no to things—not because I told her to, but because they conflicted with what she actually wanted to spend her time on. She started protecting her own focus.
That's the real goal: children who can identify what matters to them, create conditions to make it happen, and evaluate whether their time aligns with their values. Not productivity for its own sake, but intentionality in service of meaning.
The question isn't whether your children are busy. The question is whether they're making time for what truly matters to them. Help them answer that question well, and you've given them something more valuable than any scheduled activity could provide. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends at least 60 minutes of unstructured play daily—not because play is frivolous, but because it builds the cognitive flexibility and creative problem-solving that structured activities alone cannot develop.
Building Focus as a Family Value
What strikes me most about the Make Time approach is how it reframes success. In a culture that celebrates busyness, teaching children to prioritize quality time over quantity is countercultural—and essential. When we model intentional time use, we give our children permission to do the same.
The skills children develop through this practice extend far beyond childhood. Learning to identify what matters, protect time for it, and reflect on outcomes builds a foundation for emotional regulation that serves them throughout life. They become adults who don't just react to demands but actively shape how they spend their finite hours.
